Peggy Guggenheim Collection

After tragically losing her father on the Titanic, heiress Peggy Guggenheim befriended Dadaists, dodged Nazis, and amassed avant-garde works by 200 modern artists at her palatial home on the Grand Canal. Peggy’s Palazzo Venier dei Leoni became a modernist shrine, chronicling surrealism, Italian futurism, and abstract expressionism, with a subtext of Peggy’s romantic pursuits – the collection includes key works by Peggy’s ex-husband Max Ernst and Jackson Pollock, among Peggy’s many rumoured lovers. Peggy collected according to her own convictions rather than for prestige or style, so her collection includes inspired folk art and lesser-known local artists alongside artists recognised internationally by just one name, including Kandinsky, Picasso, Rothko, Klee, Brancusi, Mondrian and Dali. Peggy was more than a mere tastemaker; her spirited advocacy sparked renewed interest in Italian art, which had largely gone out of favour with the rise of Mussolini and the partisan politics of WWII. For this Jewish American champion of Italian art who’d witnessed the dangers of censorship and party-line dictates, serious artwork deserved to be seen and judged on its merits. Her support led to reappraisals of Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio Morandi, Giacomo Balla and Giorgio de Chirico, and aided Venice’s own Emilio Vedova. Wander around works by Moore, Giacometti and Arp in the sculpture garden, where the city of Venice granted Peggy honorary dispensation to be buried alongside her pet dogs in 1979. Espresso is served among art installations at the garden cafe, and around the corner from the museum on Fondamenta Venier dei Leoni is the museum bookstore, selling art books in several languages and replicas of Peggy’s signature glasses – winged, like the lion of San Marco.